(7 of 10)
The same applies to force levels. To a commander, an extra division or a new aircraft carrier, another wing of planes or missiles can never hurt. For justification, the military merely points to history. In 1945, General George Marshall wrote: "We finish each bloody war with a feeling of acute revulsion against the savage form of human behavior, and yet on each occasion we confuse military preparedness with the causes of war and then drift almost deliberately into another catastrophe." In the nuclear age, there would be no time for the luxury of mobilization, which the U.S. has enjoyed in previous wars. Thus, presumably the only way to discourage attack is to prove to the potential enemy that an attack would be answered with an overwhelming counterblow. As McNamara put it: "Security depends upon taking a 'worst plausible case' and having the ability to cope with that eventuality."
This has proved a difficult theory to carry out with discrimination and economy, and the U.S. from time to time has suffered from illusory fears. In the early '50s, there was "the bomber gap." Fearful that the Russians would produce fleets of intercontinental bombers that would leave the U.S. exposed to attack, the nation began shelling out billions for new bomber series and an extensive air defense system. The Russians never fulfilled their bomber potential. Later came "the missile gap" again based on an appraisal of Moscow's ability to produce a weapon. The Kennedy Administration embarked upon an extensive missile-making program, and again the Russians failed to fulfill their potential. In 1967, McNamara admitted that he had bought too many missiles out of ignorance of what Moscow was going to do. In 1967, the Russians began to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles in quantity, but whether they were responding to the U.S. deployment or would have gone ahead on their own is impossible to tell. In any event, the sudden burst of activity is cited by Defense Secretary Melvin Laird as reason enough for the Administration to go ahead with its Safeguard ABM program. The Russians, Laird says, are striving to achieve the power to hit the U.S. so hard that it could not retaliate. Having been financially ambushed at the gap twice before, it is no surprise that the public has greeted ABM with some degree of skepticism.
The Plea from Great Falls
If considerations of strategy involve built-in waste, so do two other sets of factors that enter into the preparedness problem: the political-economic and the technical-administrative. Defense became big business in World War II, and has remained so. For most communities, military spending means prosperity. Members of the Congress may like economy for the nation, but they like prosperity for their own states and districts even more. One sign of the changing times, however, was Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's rebuke to a group of constituents who last week urged him to approve the Safeguard system. Great Falls, Mont., would be the site of one base. "The ABM," said Mansfield, "is not just another public works project. It is not some trivial boondoggle, a minor item out of the military pork barrel. It touches questions which go to the structure